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Various trolleybus stakeholders came together in Berlin last week as part of the combined ELIPTIC stakeholder dialogue workshop on trolleybuses and launch of the new Trolley 2.0 project to discuss current developments and promising innovations proving that battery-supported trolleybuses are a way forward towards electric public transport systems in European cities

As part of the ELIPTIC project, Rupprecht Consult and the global association for trolleybuses, trolley:motion, organized a stakeholder dialogue workshop in Berlin last week to discuss current developments and promising innovations proving that battery-supported trolleybuses are a way forward towards electric public transport systems in European cities.

The workshop was kicked-off with a presentation by Mikołaj Bartłomiejczyk from Politechnika Gdanska who gave an overview on the technical aspects of in-motion charging specifying requirements, current limitations and perspectives of the concept. This was followed by a block of presentations from Ádám Németh (SZKT), Marcin Wolek (University of Gdansk) and Thoralf Knote (Fraunhofer IVI) presenting the results achieved by the three cities Szeged, Gdynia and Eberswalde within the ELIPTIC project. The ELIPTIC business case and evaluation task leaders Diego Salzillo (Siemens) and Fabian Meishner (RWTH Aachen University) presented their findings on the trolley bus cluster including a total cost of ownership calculation and a comprehensive SWOT-analysis. The workshop ended with three presentations from the industry demonstrating innovative IMC projects (Marcel Manheller, Kiepe Electric) as well as solutions to allow for a smoother and cost-efficient operation of trolleybuses, e.g. through automated wiring technologies (Jan Messerschmidt, DIaLOGIKa) or systems to automatically detect maintenance requirements of trolleybus infrastructure (Wolfgang Lienhart, Kruch Railway Innovations).

The workshop was a great success with more than 40 participants with backgrounds ranging from public transport operators, city authorities, research, industry and consultancies.

The stakeholder dialogue workshop was followed by the launch of Trolley 2.0 - Trolley Systems for Smart Cities which is a project funded by the Electric Mobility Europe program in which many of the trolleybus partners from ELIPTIC will be continuing their work related to the upgrade of trolleybus systems. Trolley 2.0's aim is to prove that battery-supported trolleybuses are a way forward towards electric public transport systems in European cities, making use of the charging concept in-motion charging (IMC) which allows for the partial off-wire operation of hybrid-trolleybuses in remote sections of the networks.

The Trolley 2.0 use case partners from Szeged (HU), Arnhem (NL), Gdynia (PL) and Eberswalde (DE) will demonstrate how their existing trolleybus systems can be upgraded including new innovations for smart trolley grids such as automated wiring technology, smart trolley grid management, the usage of renewable energy sources, energy storage concepts and multi-purpose charging stations based on existing DC infrastructure from trolley networks. The work will be supported by the project's research (Universities Delft, Gdansk and Dresden) and industry partners (evopro/ Ikarus and Power Research Electronics) and managed by the global association of trolleybus cities trolley:motion.

In total, Trolley 2.0 comprises nine partners from 5 different countries. The project is running from April 2018 - September 2020 with a budget of 3 million €.